The mangled national anthem before the test in Toulouse last Friday may not have actually caused the Springbok defeat by France (20-13), but it certainly created the mood. There have been many dubious renditions of the anthem, but this was so bad it was bizarre. Normally the camera moves down the line of players as they stand to attention, revealing intensity of emotion, carefully hidden fear, nervous sweat and occasionally a few tears. This time they were either trying hard not to laugh or trying not to be visibly angry.
Ryan Kankowski - A day to forget
This sense of bafflement extended into the way they played. The French, by contrast, were inspired by a real singer and they played like a team that were fresh physically and mentally, not worn down (like us) by 10 months of relentlessly intense rugby in four separate competitions: the Super 14, the Tri-Nations, the test series against the British & Irish Lions, and the Currie Cup.Paradoxically, the defeat was set up by the Boks establishing an early and apparently comfortable lead of 13-3, including an almost arrogant drop goal by Morne Steyn. It was as if they thought that would be enough to win - and then they failed to score another point, while French pressure enabled the home team to score 17 more points.
Even those Springboks who have had less game time this year, like Ryan Kankowski, were affected by the general malaise. Kankowski always seemed either half a metre ahead or behind play, like a batsman whose timing is out, and on another day another referee would not have yellow-carded him for being offside. It was one of those days when an entire team gets infected by lethargy, as much a result of mental as physical staleness.
Talented as Kankowski is, he isn't Pierre Spies. The Boks missed the sheer presence of Spies (injured) and Jean de Villiers and Frans Steyn (newly exiled). Their absence seems to have upset the balance of the side, which raises the question: after a year of unprecedented success, has this team already peaked?
We may get an answer to that when the Boks plays Ireland, the Six Nations champions, in the final game of the tour. Australia were deprived of victory over the Irish when Brian O'Driscoll scored a try in his 100th test, and the 20-20 result seemed a fair reflection. Just a few months ago, Australia looked a long way behind the Springboks and the All Blacks. So have the Wallabies improved? Or were Ireland still rusty near the start of the northern hemisphere season?
Getting back to the anthem issue: why is it that so little attention is paid to something that so many people regard as important? It is not clear why the choice of singer and backing (band, recorded music, trumpeter, bagpipes) should be left to the host country. Foreigners, not surprisingly, tend to be ignorant of our cultural nuances and insensitive to the language compromise that created our anthem in the first place. At the very least, though, you'd expect the SA Rugby Union to check such things well before kickoff time.
Ranking the Analysts 2009
